Week 5 Game Jam Pt2

Week 5 or week 6? Kind of week 6 but mainly week 5.

Anyway completion of the Jam and i finally submitted to the finishing my concept Sandman's Journey. i am pleased with my outcome although maybe not some much in the practice of completing it.

I set out with the idea of becoming more confident in visual programming and developing the mechanics for the game. This would be my focus and as previously mentioned i had gone with the MDA theory and started to develop how the game would work from the start as this meant i could achieve the second goal of creating a playable.

The Ideation stage was slow but once the idea was well placed i was focused on the mechanics. This was the hardest part as i would need to research into how i could create the code and then adapt it to what i wanted.

Two methods would take place. Adapt the found code to the idea which would mean further understanding of the programming and how the engine worked. Or, adapt the idea to fit the found code and my ability.

This ended up being a mixture of the two, starting to achieve the first and falling on the later when it became to complex and time was running out.

I aware that my level of understanding had some advantages, it meant using the engine would be familiar but getting all the code to work intrinsically was my grey cloud and this took a huge amount of time.

It was clear that i set my expectation high, this was proven in not wanting to use any secondary sources assets, i would make all my own and everything would be created by me.

This was important so that i get an idea of the full process and how everything would mesh together. I wanted ultimate control over my work and outcome.

This issue that i think needs to be addressed, especially in my working practice. The need for control over all aspects of the project.

The management of time was questionable, the KanBan board that i created was successful in keeping focus on the task and ensuring things got done before moving on to the next. The Miro boards helps with formulating my ideas and preventing Feature Creep or dismissing changes that could happen later. However time was something i didn't manage and this was erratic through out the project. I could not predict how long tasks were going to take or how long it would take me to understand the solutions and then adapt on them.

Once i started to see my initial ideas for the mechanics develop and change, this due to my lack of understanding or capability it dramatically effected my work practice as i would then spend a great deal of time working on the problem.

Under different circumstances this could be accommodated through further planning and a longer time frame, it would also be something that a team would be involved in and decisions made on best practice for the outcome of the project. However this was a Jam with limited times and i was was working solo and i had tunnel vision at this stage. Time management and reaching out are areas that should be addressed in future projects.

Successes though from the project were plentiful, i came out of the process highlighting areas of improvement in my practice while achieving set goals. It has enable me to use the areas of improvement as a spring board going into the next project. I think focusing on project structure, time management and planning of the stages would greatly improve my practice and i think using Trello may help break time down into tasks. I felt i could have manged and planned the sprints better.

https://gamedevmatt.itch.io/sandmans-journey